Despite my best efforts, my fears had a mind of their own. I couldn't stop the thoughts from coming in waves, in plagues. The first man he ever killed had been one of his own men. He murdered a pregnant mother. A child. He slaughtered a village single handed. Earth kingdom soldiers somehow coerced him into committing horrible crimes. A dark spirit did. A dark spirit revealed what horrible consequences there would be if he came home, and he chose to come home anyway. He lost count of how many people he killed. He never even tried to count them. He derived immense pleasure from their pain. He felt nothing from their pain, neither pain nor pleasure, neither sadness nor delight, mere apathy as if he were killing ants.

He incinerated every member of his crew.

It would've shocked her to know how many of her imaginings were true.

I refused to listen to them, even if I couldn't prevent them from coming. I refused to do anything but fight for him, but show him how much I loved him in everything I did and said, even if it exhausted him at times.

Once, after I'd found a fifty-sixth way to say I love you, he asked why I kept rambling on with so many love stories and poems and metaphors.

"I have always loved you more than words can say," I pointed out. "I'm just making the futile attempts to articulate it more often than usual."

Her gift was still seeing the sunset in the darkness. Her curse was that she never realized it wasn't rising.

My happiness did not depend on his. I'd realized long ago, even if he hadn't, that we could not complete each other, that our hearts could always meet but never truly be exchanged, that we were human… But his apathy and restraint, his stoic mystery and constant secrecy, brought me misery. My curiosity threatened to drive me mad, my disbelief over how my prince could be more aloof standing next to me than he'd ever been while we were separated…

If I surprised him with a touch, he wouldn't soften, and he wouldn't tense. His muscles wouldn't react at all. There'd be no intake or release of breath. It was worth than being invisible. It was being intangible. It was as if I couldn't change him in the least, couldn't cause the slightest reaction, unless… Unless, I don't know.

I looked at her when she couldn't see. I looked at her every time she couldn't see, as if to constantly remind myself she was something I still possessed, as if I couldn't stop looking at her.

My Ursa.

My angel, my demon, my goddess, my death.

My cousins didn't visit very often after that. I couldn't bear to admit, much less explain why I couldn't explain why, things were so different between my best friend and me. Ozai always scared them to some extent, but he petrified them now, and I couldn't bring myself to face them and defend him. Not after I had felt that fear too, not after I saw what they saw, not after I had given in, for however brief a moment, to the one thing I'd always scorned and mocked and refused to believe. Ozai noticed how uncomfortable I was around them, which was probably—indubitably—why Maylin's husband was offered a better assignment on another island.

The children missed their cousins, especially Azula, who seemed to be slipping further and further away from me with every passing day.

Ozai's sardonic sense of humor had always meant that Azula's antics of disrespect, disobedience, or cunning delighted him and made him want to laugh, but he always suppressed it before. He'd frown to hide his smile and would never contradict one of my scoldings or punishments.

Now he'd smile. Now she was the only one who could make him laugh without pretense or reservation, somehow making both my heart sing and my skin crawl.

Azula delighted in her newfound ability to promote such a reaction, and she clung to him even more than she shunned me.

I didn't force the issue, trusting Ozai to provide what I couldn't seem to give, but I felt somewhat blindsided when he eventually recommended we send her to the Academy.

He'd announced it casually, as if discussing plans for her sixth birthday party, while I was brushing his hair.

I responded by putting down the brush and staring at him in silence, at a loss, and he turned around with that blasted mask of impartiality on his face, beginning to list some reasons why it was a good idea. She thrived on competition, which at home meant came at the cost of Zuko's self-esteem, advancing far past him and others her age. The education the academy offered was, of course, top notch, and she needed to learn to make friends. She would be with Ty Lee, Lo and Li could accompany her, she could visit home once a month or more…

He delivered all this information with an air of indifference and detachment, as if he hadn't calculated every reaction and counterargument I could have, as if he hadn't planned out every phrase word-for-word, as if he didn't know exactly how to dismiss my every protest and exactly what I needed to hear.

"It's just… She's so young," I managed to whisper.

How could I send her away like that? How I could ship off my baby, as if I was some detached mother who cared more about propriety and reputation than being a parent, who didn't care enough to deal with whatever issues threatening my child, who had no patience or compassion or willingness to work with whatever she threw at me…

The fact that she agreed how desperate she was. She never could have unless she was out of ideas and out of options. She'd tried everything she could think of to no avail.

Azula wouldn't listen, Azula wouldn't talk, and Ursa was worn out.

But Ozai wasn't.

He hadn't been home that long. From what I could tell, he hadn't tried many—he hadn't tried anything with her. He encouraged her more than he corrected her. He undermined me in a thousand little ways without ever seeming to oppose me and while always pretending to defend and support me. He never seemed to see what I saw in her. He just knew that I saw something.

I'd been so hopeful that he could connect to her, work with her, but how could he intervene in something he couldn't see?

I could only pray that her teachers and friends could be what we couldn't be, could grant her the help and perspective and empathy she so desperately—

He slipped in a side comment, an after-thought, that nearly stopped my heart. He'd said it quickly, off handed, in the hope I wouldn't notice, in the hope he could sweep it under the rug.

"Zuko is staying here," I almost growled when he mentioned him attending the boys' academy.

He arched a brow as if he was surprised by this reaction, as if he hadn't anticipated it perfectly well.

"Alone? Without any other children his—"

"He won't be alone; he'll be with his parents," I reminded him with outrage. "Ozai, if you think I'm shipping off a seven-year-old boy—"

"As opposed to a six-year-old girl?" he said, phrasing it as the gentle reminder it wasn't.

"You know I'm at the end of my rope with her, you know I can't…" I couldn't finish the sentence. I couldn't accept it even in my head.

I can't control my own daughter.

I can't figure out what's wrong with that child.

Why would I ever have to control her?

How could I ever say anything's wrong with her?

The tears came, and Ozai reached for me, perhaps out of instinct, perhaps habit, perhaps obligation.

I spurned his touch for once, insistent.

"Zuko isn't going anywhere. This is his home. He belongs here. He needs me!"
"And Azula doesn't?" he reasoned, half cooing. "She'll take it as a sign she's done something wrong, that something is wrong with her. That she doesn't belong here and never will. That it's easier for you to love Zuko, that you'd rather have Zuko—"

"Is that how she'll take it, or is that what you'll tell her?" I accused cruelly in my pain.

He didn't seem the least bit offended.

"Ursa," he tried to soothe me, closing the space between us and looking down on me with those eyes and cheekbones of his.

He knew the effect it would have on me, his muscular chest so close to me, his breath on my face, but a mother's love cannot be stopped.

"I need my children. I need both of them. I understand if one of them needs something I can't give her, but I can't lose—I WON'T be separated from both of them."

A fire burned in her eyes that I hadn't seen in years, daring me to deny her this, and I realized two things.

Her will was unflinching and unalterable, at least in this.

She wouldn't say it, and perhaps didn't realize it, but she couldn't live here alone with me.

"Of course," he agreed, kissing my hand and letting me crumble into him. "I'm sorry, of course."

A messenger interrupted us, summoning Ursa to serve her father-in-law tea.

When I mentioned planning for our vacation to Ember Island, which we hadn't been to since he left, Ozai refused with that finality that commanded obedience.

I was unworthy of placing one foot on the isle. My presence would've corrupted every grain of sand.

He suggested I take the children without him, but the thought so disgusted and wounded me that I immediately swore that going there without him would be unthinkable and unforgivable. He didn't understand, but he nodded, and part of me knew we'd never visit the island again.

Even while all of me fought for him.

He fought for me too. He did. He tried to live every day. He tried to love and feel, and he often did. I'd see flashes, brief, throbbing moments, of my Ozai. Of his eyes. His fourth-smirk. His laugh even. He loved me when he could feel love, and he loved me when he couldn't. He tried to be all that we needed.

But he wanted more.

He kept meeting with fire sages and soldiers, with generals and nobles and Azulon's advisors, anyone who had the slightest power or influence, anyone he could manipulate. He kept attending more and more war meetings until he never missed one. He kept calculating and examining, obsessing and scheming, until I felt his paranoia form a suffocating fog.

I helped when I could. I knew how to put on the role and mask of the perfect princess and hostess if he wanted to invite someone to dinner or tea. I knew when to smile and when to be silent, when to be welcoming and when to be distant. I could turn it on and off and be whoever he needed me to be. I knew how to play the part for him, so I gave him all that I was. I could do it, so I did. I held the weight of the world that threatened to crush him.

Most of the time.

But I also fell. I also bled and broke down.

His words built me up again and again only to dig knives into my heart, send me crashing down, force me to fall apart.

Because I was a woman. A mortal woman with mortal flesh. With a beating heart and flowing blood. Not a metaphor. Not a painting or sculpture. Not a machine.

Every time the battle exhausted me, the roles and duties, being a mother, being a princess, being the living embodiment of my husband's remaining humanity, he'd do some little thing that revived every dashed hope and brought back all my faith in him.

That typically just meant I'd be sitting on the corner of my bed, my back to him to hide my drained expression, my eyes unable to form any my tears, and my mind on the verge of surrender. Then he'd come back before he could he leave, he'd touch my shoulder, and he'd hum our song.

It was more than enough. It was all the hope and strength I needed, even if it wasn't strength enough for me to stand up and kiss him, even it wasn't hope enough that he could kiss me back in the way he used to, the way I fell in love with.

I still ached for her. I ached for her in a way I'd never ached for anything. But I couldn't touch her. The ache was a hunger, a mad violence, that had to be suppressed completely or it would consume and destroy her utterly. I would destroy her utterly.

The discipline it took for me to muster up the slightest kindness and smother the constant inferno exhausted me, pained me, twisted me more than I'd already been twisted, which should've been impossible.

Living with my actions grew worse every day, haunting me more and more…

Until there was nothing left to haunt.